"I don't think about the disadvantages," said Rachel Boynton, the director and producer of the documentary Big Men, a film that tells the story of the quest for oil in West Africa. "For me, this film started with a trip to Nigeria. When I got there, all of the men wanted to have a beer with me. I was embraced for being a woman in a man's world."

Laura Goode, a six-foot platinum blonde in her 20s has a tactic she calls "kindergarten teacher." The writer/producer of the female road-trip flick Farah Goes Bang acts innocent and wide-eyed until she until she gets to, as she said, "first base." she added, "And then I use the bait and switch [to get what I want]."

ESPN Films's Libby Geist told us how Barbara Kopple was able to get emotional answers from male athletes in a locker room. "She said she was different and was going to use that," Geist explained.

These filmmakers were part of a Tribeca Talks panel called "New Chick Flicks," which dissected how being a female in the film industry is changing with sports films, comedies, and war documentaries. In addition to Geist, Goode and Boynton, the panel featured Alias Ruby Blade: A Story of Love and Revolution producer Tanya Ager Meillier, and it was moderated by filmmaker Abigail Disney.

Advantages like access, or telling a more emotionally open story however, are overshadowed by the challenge of learning how to fire someone, get angry, or stop being polite, Boynton said.

However, there are bright spots in mainstream films, Disney shared, like the decision Ridley Scott made when he cast Sigourney Weaver in the lead of Alien. "Ripley was written for a man," Disney, the grand-niece of Walt Disney, revealed. And when Weaver was cast, "Not a word or a moment was changed in that film."